Create a holiday card for Thanksgiving or Christmas in KidPix or another drawing program and reinforce early writing skills while teaching mouse skills, toolbars and tool use: (more…)

Understanding how to use the internet has become a cornerstone issue for students. No longer do they complete their research on projects solely in the library. Now, there is a vast landscape of resources available on the internet.

But with wealth of options comes responsibility for their use. As soon as children begin to visit the online world, they need the knowledge to do that safely, securely, responsibly. There are several great programs available to guide students through this process (Common Sense’s Digital Passport, Carnegie CyberAcademy, Netsmart Kids). I’ve collected them as resources and developed a path to follow that includes the best of everything.

Here’s Kindergarten–feel free to print this lesson. Use the lines in front of the steps to check off completed work:

Overview/Big Ideas

Students learn how to live in the digital world of internet websites, copy-righted images, and virtual friends who may be something different.

Essential Questions

• What is a ‘digital citizen’?
• How is being a citizen of the internet the same/different than my home town?
• What are the implications of digital citizenship in today’s world?

Objectives and Steps

The objectives of this lesson are:

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Education has changed. No longer is it contained within four classroom walls or the physical site of a school building. Students aren’t confined by the eight hours between school bells or the struggling budget of an underfunded program. Now, education can be found anywhere — teaming up with students in Kenya, Skyping with an author in Sweden, or chatting with an astrophysicist on the International Space Station. Students can use Google Earth to take a virtual tour of a zoo or a blog to collaborate on class research. Learning has no temporal or geographic borders and is available wherever students and teachers find an Internet connection. This vast landscape of resources is offered digitally, often free, but to take that cerebral trek through the online world, children must know how to do it safely, securely, and responsibly. This used to mean limiting access to the Internet, blocking websites, and layering rules upon rules hoping (vainly) to discourage students from using an infinite and fascinating resource. It didn’t work. Best practices now suggest that instead of cocooning students, we teach them to be good digital citizens, confident and competent. Here are eleven projects to teach kids authentically, blended with your regular lessons, the often complicated topic of becoming good digital citizens, knowledgeable about their responsibilities in an Internet world. (more…)

Before you start this project, you might want to visit How to KidPix I and How to KidPix II.

There are a lot of graphic art options for youngers. We choose KidPix because it is user friendly, easily understood, and doesn’t clutter up the screen with anything other than what new graphic artists need.

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Here’s Why Kids Should Participate in Extracurricular Activities

Most parents ignore this, but playtime activities significantly contribute to a child’s overall development. The key to raising children successfully is acknowledging that learning doesn’t take place only within the classroom environment. Similarly, academics aren’t the only key to success in the future. That said, below are a few reasons your child should actively participate in extracurricular activities:

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It sounds easy, but to a five or six year old, holding the mouse, clicking that left button, dragging and dropping while holding a finger down is darn difficult. Here’s a list (click for updates):

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Understanding how to use the internet has become a cornerstone issue for students. No longer do they complete their research on projects solely in the library. Now, there is a varied landscape of resources available on the internet.

But with wealth of options comes responsibility to use resources properly. As soon as children begin to visit the online world, they need the knowledge to do that safely, securely, responsibly. There are several great programs available to guide students through this process (Common Sense’s Digital Passport, Carnegie CyberAcademy, K-8 Digital Citizenship). I’ve collected a long list of resources here:

K-HS Digital Citizenship Resources

Today, we focus on Kindergarten–1st Grade.

Overview/Big Ideas

Students learn how to live in the digital world of internet websites, copy-righted images, and virtual friends who may be something different.

Essential Questions

• What is a ‘digital citizen’?
• How is being a citizen of the internet the same/different than my home town?
• What are the implications of digital citizenship in today’s world?

Objectives and Steps

The objectives of this lesson are (use the lines in front of each item to check them off as completed):

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Here are popular resources teachers are using to share stories:

1. Aesop Fables—no ads
2. Aesop’s Fables
3. Audio stories
4. Childhood Stories
5. Classic Fairy Tales
6. Fairy Tales and Fables
7. Listen/read–Free non-fic audio books
8. Owl Eyes (classics)
9. Starfall
10. Stories read by actors
11. Stories to read for youngsters
12. Storyline
13. Unite for Literacy

Click for more online story resources (or to update this list)

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Here’s the list of Kindergarten websites I use most often during the school year. Notice that many of the headings are links to more websites under that theme:

Animals

Art

1. 1. Coloring Books
   2. Drawing

Coding

Critical Thinking

Digital Citizenship

1. 1. Bullying–a read-along book
   2. Cybersmart Hero
   3. Hector’s World–Cyberbullying

Farms

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Learning computers starts in kindergarten with understanding hardware. This lesson plan (#103 in the lesson plan book noted below) includes three pages. Introduce less with K, more each year until by sixth grade, students are good hardware problem solvers because they understand the basics.

Page 2 is an assessment you can either print out and have students fill in or push out to students to be completed online.

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